Public Inquiries and Policy Design

Public inquiries regularly produce outcomes of importance to policy design. The policy design literature has ignored the ways that public inquiries can act as policy design tools, meaning the functions that inquiries can offer the policy designer are not properly understood. This Element addresses this gap in two ways. First, a theoretical discussion, underpinned by international empirical illustrations, explains how inquiries perform policy design roles and can be classified as procedural policy tools. A focus on four inquiry functions - catalytic, learning, processual, and legitimation. Second, address the challenge of designing inquiries that have the policy-facing capacities required to make them effective. The authors introduce plurality as a key variable influencing effectiveness, demonstrating its relevance to internal inquiry operations, the external inquiry environment, and policy tool selection. This presents conceptual and practical insights to speak to academic and practice-orientated audiences.